A storm woke me last night at 2 a.m. There was non-stop thunder and lightning, with wind and rain so loud I could hear it in our house — which is normally quiet, since it’s been soundproofed against airport noise.
I went straight to my laptop, thinking I could check the weather online. There was no Internet, though — and then I realized that our alarm system was beeping, because the power was out. With all the thunder and lightning, I probably buzzed around for five or ten minutes before I realized we’d lost our electricity.
That’s not the worst part, though. I woke Dan up, and we both fussed with every battery-powered radio in our house. We couldn’t get any of them to work. I pawed through our junk drawer for extra batteries, but the problem wasn’t the batteries: it was the technology, and the middle-aged fuddy duddies who were trying to operate it. Our big stereo wouldn’t work with the batteries we had, and we couldn’t figure out how to turn on the radio function with our kids’ CD players.
Finally the storm passed and we went back to bed. The power came on at 8 a.m.
Now we’re going out in search of a simple, old-fashioned radio we can use in an emergency … and even more extra batteries.
